About Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo’s life has become as iconic as her work, in no small part because she was her own most popular subject: roughly one third of her entire oeuvre is self-portraits. Her works were intensely personal and political, often reflecting her turbulent personal life, her illness, and her relationship with the revolutionary muralist Diego Rivera. Kahlo dedicated her life and her art to the Mexican Revolution and the simultaneous artistic renaissance it engendered. Her style of painting has been widely categorized; Rivera considered her a realist, while André Breton considered her a Surrealist, and Kahlo eschewed labels entirely. “I paint my own reality,” she wrote. “The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.” She identified most strongly with Mexican popular and folk art, also evidenced in her habit of dressing elaborately in Tehuana costumes.

About Diego Rivera

Inspired by Renaissance frescoes and motivated by a conviction in the value of public art, Diego Rivera found his calling as a muralist. A visit to the Soviet Union informed his signature earth-toned, Social Realist style. In accordance with his Marxist views, he “made the masses the heroes of monumental art,” painting narrative scenes championing indigenous Mexican culture and workers who toiled in the name of progress. Detroit Industry (1932-3), a 27-panel tribute to the city’s labor force, reveals Rivera’s interest in the form and function of industrial technology. While his concern for the working class resonated in the United States, his inclusion of a portrait of Lenin in Man at the Crossroads (1933), a mural commissioned for Rockefeller Center in New York City, proved highly controversial.